Lord of Innistrad
by Delfin Renata
Summary: With Avacyn gone, Edgar Markov should have stepped up to protect the defenseless people of Innistrad. Sorin will see that he pays for his failure.
1. I Ancient Grudge

Disclaimer: All card names, non-original places and people are property of Wizards of the Coast.

Ancient Grudge

* * *

Soft and unsettling, the peals of the ghoul-caller bells started well into the celebrations, echoing mournfully over the fens of Gavony on the Feast of Goldnight. The answering tremors scrabbling at the mausoleum walls roused Grafwarden Carsten from his brandy and sent him reaching for his blessed crossbow. He felt safer in his gatehouse with it close, but the silver bolts seemed a vanishing failsafe as centuries of sigils and Avacynian wards all failed to quiet the dead stirring in their tombs.

Carsten had dealt with necromancers before. Usually a lone loose cannon, maybe two, they'd dig up a few graves and carry their prize back to the hills. They never tried anything like this, never on a holy day. He sprinted down the rows of grafstones, swerving and aiming his weapon wildly into space, but the ghoul caller was nowhere in sight, and the bells kept ringing. The hallowed earth shuddered and cracked under his feet as a pair of shriveled black hands clawed their way into the light. Shrieks, groans, and snarls rose in cacophony beneath the grafs, and Carsten, transfixed in horror, shot a bolt at the thing's skull as soon as it surfaced. His trembling hands misfired, and the bolt lodged in the zombie's festering shoulder with a sickening thud. Its desiccated face turned towards him and Carsten could have sworn it leered, its withered hands grasping at the earth for purchase as it struggled out of the grave.

He dashed for the gate, dodging the hands and mouths of the slavering undead that not even his blessed silver could banish back to the tomb. The hungry ghouls would head for the town; he bolted the iron gate of the grafyard behind him and prayed to Avacyn the thick stone walls would hold long enough for him to rally the cathars.

The dirt road into town seemed to stretch out over the moors for an eternity as Carsten ran and prayed, entreating the warrior angels of Flight Goldnight to arrive in time. Most necromancers wouldn't dare show their faces on the angels' feast day, when the sun didn't sink below the horizon and the whole flight passed over the earth in battle formation. He pushed himself harder for fear the necromancers knew something he didn't. Wards, amulets, blessed silver—even the cathars relied on these, and the most powerful wards at the church's disposal hadn't stopped the ghoul-callers from raising a zombie horde.

The midnight sun hovered low in the sky, lighting up the empty road as wild moors gave way to cultivated fields. The spires of the village houses, decked out in colored prayer flags, drew nearer with Carsten's every frantic step. A hymn to Avacyn rang out triumphantly from the orchestra arrayed in the town square, swelling in pitch as the grafwarden drew near. In front of the orchestral pavilion, villagers were singing, drinking, and dancing, celebrating the coming of the angels and a prosperous year on their farms with toasts and exchanges of gifts. Carsten touched the Avacynian shrine at the head of the road for good luck and shouldered through the crowd, belaboring and grappling his way toward the cathar outpost at the center of the mayhem. Gaining the door, he slammed it shut behind him and shouted over the din of carousing soldiers.

"Arm yourselves! We've lost the cemetery!" He leaned against the doorframe and caught his breath as the cathars fell quiet. "Ghoul-callers have raised the dead!"

A few drunken giggles punctured the silence. Zombie attacks didn't happen on holy days. The detachment captain looked up from her game of dice and slowly got to her feet.

"You're sure, Carsten? It wasn't just a body snatcher or an angry geist?" The soldiers shifted uneasily in their seats.

"Ghoul-callers, captain. I heard the bells and saw the corpses climbing out of the grafs. The old wards and sigils didn't do a thing, blessed silver didn't stop 'em, either."

She sighed, picked up her tricorn hat from its perch on the back of her chair and tugged it onto her head. Discipline was not the order of the day on the holiest day of the year; many of the cathars didn't even put down their drinks.

"Grab your weapons, soldiers. Gunter, take your squadron and head for the cemetery. The rest of you assemble out back."

Amid discontented grumblings about Carsten's ineptitude, the cathars threw on their armor, readied their blades, and organized in half-hearted formation on the side of town facing the cemetery. Whatever undead abominations might be dredged up out of the grafs would soon be laid to rest by the host of angelic warriors. No ghoul callers would dare sound their bells to raise the dead when the angels showed up.

* * *

The stench of putrefying flesh wafts over the broken stone collar of an Avacynian shrine at the entrance to a nameless little town on the fens of Gavony. Sorin has seen half a dozen such towns so far, emptied of living souls and rotting silently on the windswept moors. It doesn't seem to matter how many nameless horrors he banishes to the void; the people of Innistrad are being routed, driven before the ascending darkness to their last remaining refuge behind the high walls of Thraben. Avacyn, the archangel, the crown jewel of his creation, is missing from her post. The protective magic that hinges on her power has ceased to function. He cannot forgive himself for not having acted sooner.

It has been two days since he came home, but he has felt Avacyn's absence for much longer. He is busy, and the mess on Zendikar hasn't shortened the list of worlds he needs to save. But Innistrad is helpless without her, and he sees the fruits of his inaction in the bleached bones that blanket the square before him, in the charred spires of the blasted houses that jut into the darkness like the masts of a foundered ship. He stepped out of the Blind Eternities into Gavony thinking it would be safe. Now he wonders if even Thraben, with its army of cathars, can outlast the maelstrom that is soon to beset it.

In the ravaged hamlets and litany of corpses, he sees the awful zenith of Edgar's hypocrisy.

When Avacyn disappeared, Edgar should have stepped up as Innistrad's savior. Here was the perfect opportunity for the architect of one of its greatest evils to live up to his lofty words and shoulder the burdens he had thought to assign himself. Armies of vampires should have fought side by side with the cathars to protect humanity, with Edgar leading the charge to defend his reluctant subjects. Edgar Markov, sire of all vampires, Innistrad's erstwhile self-proclaimed messiah, should have owned a fraction of the responsibility he claimed to exercise by culling defenseless humans to sate his hunger.

Under no circumstances should he have rested on his laurels in Markov Manor, feasting on human blood while watching the world burn.

Edgar might have saved himself and his kin from Sorin's judgment, if for one critical moment his conceit might have been turned to the benefit of Innistrad's people. Had Edgar even once demonstrated the compassion he invoked to justify his debaucheries, he might have earned leniency for the Markov clan. Instead, he has arrived at the final test of his usefulness and shown himself for the selfish, depraved monster Sorin has always known him to be.

Sorin has already failed. He sees it in the ruins of this hapless village he should have protected. Edgar will pay for his refusal to lift a finger to do the same, and all his clan will suffer with him. Sorin has come home.


	2. II Human Frailty

Author's Note: This chapter begins a series of chapters that explores Sorin's past on Innistrad. Content begins prior to the ignition of Sorin's planeswalker spark, and chronicles the events that lead up to it.

Human Frailty

* * *

Hemlock berries, a raven's claw, mandrake root.

Sometimes, Sorin didn't know why he bothered taking care of his grandfather's chores. It wasn't like potions could fill an empty stomach. The store hadn't sold anything in weeks.

He was hungry beyond what he once believed to be livable. He moved with effort, fracturing the absolute silence of the desolate forest with his clumsy steps and scattered thoughts. When he was in good health, a trip to the hills and back would have been a morning walk. Now it took concentration just to stay on his feet.

The remains of the river were less than a mile off. Hemlock liked water. If any survived, it would be there. The claw he picked up soon after he set out, not far from the house at a desiccated nest. He didn't know what he'd do about the mandrake.

Frail brown leaves crunched under his boots, though it was only summer and the forests of Stensia were famous for the bright autumn colors of their trees. No water, no trees. No crops either. No people. He couldn't be certain the last time he ate.

"This is it, Sorin," his grandfather had told him that morning. He had set the knapsack down on the table with the ingredients list. Inside were a stale chunk of bread and a few bites of salted fish.

"Find me everything on that paper and I promise it'll last."

So Sorin trudged up the hill toward the parched ghost of a river.

The dry wind wafted wisps of detritus against the thin cotton of Sorin's shirt. The woods themselves were dying, drying up and blowing away in the winds that drove out the rain and brought death to Stensia. He ought to leave. Grandfather was all he had left, and it wasn't his fault Grandfather thought their village had something left to save.

If he wanted to get out alive, he had to make for the Kruin Pass and the farmlands of Gavony, Edgar and his stubbornness be damned. The old man was irascible at the best of times, and the more the drought ravaged their village, the more he seemed determined to stay. The past few months had been one failed scheme after another improvised by Edgar to try and turn the tide, and Sorin was now thoroughly disillusioned. He owed his grandfather for everything he'd learned from him; Edgar was a bottomless resource of magical learning, and Sorin owed all of his considerable arcane knowledge to his instruction. But getting out of Stensia had become a matter of survival, and Sorin could no longer afford to wait. He'd do his final duty by Edgar and absolve himself of responsibility.

He sat down to take his lunch in the brown depression in the earth where the Geier River used to flow. The dry soil was hard and unyielding, and coated his pants in a fine layer of gritty dust. The food Edgar had sent him off with was little more than scraps, but he devoured it with the ravening hunger of the starving. He thought someone might have seen him leave town with a knapsack, but no one came to take his food. Not that it mattered. He was still hungry.

A few moments of sifting through the detritus of the dried-up shallows revealed the withered brown stems of some dead hemlock. He cut a few samples, but the plants were of such poor quality, he doubted they would brew a functional potion at all. He had found mandrake in this part of the woods before, but finding it now would depend on him seeing those specific dried-up leaves in the dead brown forest.

Edgar's discontented mutterings started after the first dry month. The autumn harvest would be greatly diminished, if it didn't outright fail. Sorin's mother laughed it off. Two or three dry moons in a row weren't outside the range of normalcy, and the winter wheat was sure to come through. A little bad weather might upset Stensia natives, but they were spoiled. In Kessig, she had gone to the fields fully armed, and they had still lost kin to werewolf attacks. She had braved the Getander Pass on her own because she knew it was safer to be a laborer in Stensia than a landowner, like her father, in werewolf country. It just showed how spoiled her husband's family was that a little drought was enough to scare them.

The winter wheat didn't come through. They still had Edgar's alchemy shop, but the outlying towns weren't any better off and Edgar traveled farther and farther out in search of customers. It wasn't long before the larder ran dry.

Adela, the Gephardts' little girl, was the first to sicken and die. Her family had shown up all skin and bones at the burial, except for Adela's brother, too weak to come, who followed her to the grave a week later. The Markovs held out longer than most. They were the wealthiest family in town, and had the largest supply of food in their stores. Sorin's parents wouldn't hear talk of leaving the family home, even when things grew so desperate they drew on Edgar's alchemy supplies to supplement their meals. Rain was bound to come eventually. The drought couldn't last forever. These things pass.

Sorin's mother and father died on the very same night, too hungry to keep on living and too desperately in love to leave each other behind. Sorin and Edgar dug the graves themselves in a vacant corner of the cemetery. There were no grafdiggers to do the job for them, no pallbearers to carry the coffins, no moon priest to preside over the funeral. The town priest had died some weeks before, having given away all his food to help the poor, starving Gephardts, who all died anyway. Sorin wasn't sure how his grandfather kept going in his old age, but Edgar clung to life with a grim vitality that lit his sunken eyes with a sinister fire. The old man was more stubborn than ever, but if Sorin could finally convince him to leave Stensia, he'd willingly carry him over to Gavony on his back.

Mandrake leaves. In his hunger, Sorin almost missed them under the shadow of a bare ash tree. He knelt in the tree's frail, spindly shadow to dig up the roots. The leaves snapped off at his touch, so he dug up the root with his hands and added it to the knapsack.

The sky had taken on a haze since the drought set in, a rusted-iron grey that tinged the horizon with unreality. At first the desperate villagers hailed it as a portent of storm clouds, but the haze settled in to stay and the clouds never came. Sorin couldn't make out the sun at all in the russet half-light, and picked his way home through the woods by force of habit. He had thought to follow Grandfather into the alchemy trade one day, and the woods around their farm had been his laboratory. The locations of a dozen useful plants were still fresh in his memory. He'd be back shortly. On the far side of the wooded hills lay the road to Gavony, the quickest route to salvation, the Kruin Pass.

The fence posts marking the outer edge of the Markovs' farm had fallen into disrepair, tipping over at wild angles in the hard, cracked earth. The back of the family home faced out onto the desolation, its elegant gabled roof and paneled glass windows relics of the Markovs' former prosperity. The neat, ordered rows of Edgar's alchemy garden were still visible next to the house. Sorin had dreamed of being master of the house one day, expanding his grandfather's alchemy business and adding to the farmland his mother and father had acquired in a series of fortuitous deals. Just a few years ago, the fields were fertile and vibrant, shimmering gold with swaying stalks of wheat or the deep green of corn and beans. Now his family's livelihood had been ravaged by drought and death, reduced to a barren, dusty waste that couldn't sustain even the most tenacious weeds. He would have been a dutiful son; he had stayed as long as he had out of his sense of duty to Edgar, who kept insisting he was going to fix their problems and they didn't need to go anywhere.

The whinnying of a horse broke the silence of the still afternoon. Sorin furrowed his brow in confusion and quickened his pace as he followed the noise toward the front of the house. There weren't any more live horses in town, as far as he knew. As he turned the corner into the street, he stopped in his tracks. Parked outside the sweeping veranda of the Markovs' home were two liveried carriages pulled by two emaciated, malnourished horses apiece. Each was guarded by an armed servant in matching livery nursing a bow and arrow. Closer to Sorin, two squalid chestnuts stamped in their fittings, roped to an elegant blue and gold chaise bearing the unmistakable lettered crest of Runo Stormkirk. Before the drought, the brilliant young aristocrat had been a frequent visitor of Edgar's, a fellow alumnus of the mages' colleges in Gavony and Nephalia. What had brought him away from his land and its tenants during such difficult times, Sorin could not surmise. The more distant of the two carriages, pulled by a mismatched pair of flea-bitten bays, bore a red and black insignia with which Sorin was not familiar.

Sorin nodded to the two servant guards as he stepped around the veranda to the front door, keeping a healthy distance from their precious charges. The mahogany paneling and polished brass fittings on the door were a luxury by their village's standards, but nothing in comparison to the opulence of those who could afford to travel by liveried chaise. Finding the door unlocked, he steeled himself for the unexpected and stepped inside.


	3. III Tribute to Hunger

Tribute to Hunger

* * *

"Sorin, glad you made it. Lock the door."

His grandfather's stern voice came from the dining room, set off from the entry hall by an imposing set of rosewood double doors that had been thrown open for air in the suffocating dull stillness. As soon as he stepped in from the arid wastes outside, his nose was met by the mouth-watering smell of food. Sorin eagerly threw the deadbolt and made his way past the musty living room furniture to join the party assembled around the dining room table and the lavish spread laid out before them.

Edgar sat at the head of the long table, facing the stone fireplace that dominated the eastern wall of the room, dressed for the occasion in an immaculate black waistcoat and matching suit jacket. His white hair had been slicked back from his wizened face, his goatee neatly trimmed and oiled. An ostentatious red velvet cravat was tucked into the lapels of his coat, but the richest of Edgar's clothes failed to match the finery of his guests.

Runo Stormkirk sat at Edgar's right hand, his back to the door. He turned his chair to flash a friendly smile at Sorin as he entered, his features far more haggard than when last Sorin had seen him, his neat black hair showing more than a hint of gray. His blue velvet coat, edged in gold brocade, hung loose on his thin shoulders, where once his strong frame would have filled out the garment with its imposing musculature. Across his chest hung the blue silk sash that was his badge of office as a high priest, the sigil of the sea god whom he worshiped stitched onto the center in a marvel of arabesque embroidery. His linen breeches were tucked neatly into fine leather boots, and his pale hands rested impatiently on his knees while he drummed his fingers on the fabric.

Edgar rose to his feet to make proper introductions. Not one strange guest, but two, had evidently come in the black and red carriage. Seated on Edgar's other side was an aristocratic woman, perhaps Runo's age or a bit younger, with pinned-up red curls and diamond eardrops. Her green satin dress matched the sparkling intensity of her eyes, which scrutinized Sorin unflinchingly. She was clearly a fellow Stensian, too thin for comfort. The man beside her was not. Barrel-chested and robust, he wore a flamboyant, violently red coat with a high, gold-trimmed collar, around which hung an outsize pendant bearing the insignia of the university in Thraben. He was unshaven, and his brown hair was pulled back into an unassuming ponytail.

"Allow me to introduce my grandson, Sorin," Edgar began, turning toward the unfamiliar woman and man, who nodded politely in Sorin's general direction. Looking back at his grandson, he swept a hand around the table and motioned to each of the guests in turn. "Sorin, you and Lord Stormkirk have already met. To my left is the esteemed Lady Olivia Voldaren, proprietress of the Voldaren estate near Ziel Pass and a fellow of transformation magic at the University of Havengul. The gentleman beside her is Ivan Falkenrath, magister of the University of Thraben. He hails from the central part of the Geier Reach, but has been abroad for some time pursuant to his studies. You may be familiar with his reputation as a falconer," he smiled thinly, clapping his hands together. "Now that we're all acquainted, I propose we take advantage of Ivan's generous hospitality. He has taken it upon himself to supply us with fresh food from the markets of Gavony, for which generosity we are profoundly indebted."

Sorin didn't need to be incited further. He sat down beside Runo Stormkirk and helped himself to a heaping plate of vegetables, fruit, bread, and preserved meat, tearing into the spread with the euphoric gusto of one whose desperate want has finally found an answer. His family's finest silver was laid out for the occasion, and though the fare was simple by the standards of what the Markovs had once enjoyed, it was a luxury unimaginable since the start of the drought. The emaciated Stensians snatched up fresh lettuce, spinach, beans, and goat cheese as though the best chefs in the province had been on hand to prepare them. Edgar sank his teeth into a corn cob and let the juice trickle down his beard, flakes of yellow sticking visibly between his straight white teeth. Runo and Olivia, wholly uninhibited by their evident high breeding, tore into anything their hands could reach. Even Ivan, hale and hearty though he was, picked up one slice of smoked meat after another between his thick fingers and greedily licked the residue from his lips. Casks of wine and ale were opened to slake the party's thirst. The overflowing cups of Edgar and his guests defied the barren dryness of the earth, and Sorin threw back one cup of light Gavony ale after another as Edgar filled his chalice to the brim with undiluted red wine. They ate and drank in silence, too desperate and ravening for polite conversation. The clanking of silverware and crunching of satisfied chewing echoed off the walls as the afternoon shadows lengthened.

Each person having eaten his or her fill, the assembled guests leaned back in their chairs and savored the long-denied satisfaction of a full stomach. Ivan was profusely thanked for his troubles of purchasing the food, hiring a cart to transport the precious cargo into Stensia, and smuggling it to the Markov house without being detained by hungry commoners. At Edgar's insistence, some extra food had been handed out to the Markovs' fellow villagers, and the cart and horses donated to a needy emigrant family who promised to see it safely back to Gavony. Toasts were raised in honor of them both. Edgar smiled broadly, dabbed at his lips with a napkin and again got to his feet.

"Sorin, I'm afraid you're the only one of us in the dark as to the nature of this little gathering. I apologize for the deception of omission." The other guests laughed and looked at Sorin's perturbed expression with expectancy. "As you know, the gentlemen and lady assembled today are respected magisters. I have devised a plan, with the assistance of some of our colleagues, to put an end to this wretched drought. Preparations are being made as we speak in the ritual space we've prepared. We mean to bind the spirit of the Geier River."

Sorin started in his chair and gripped the curved wooden arms in shock. "Bind? That's senseless! We'll have an angry river spirit on our hands and no relief from the drought." Sorin had summoned spirits before, under Edgar's guidance, but binding was a different beast. If summoning were a polite request, binding was a threat backed up by a set of magical shackles. Edgar gave him a patronizing smile.

"I'll be frank. We believe the river spirit to already be bound by a powerful demon. When we bind it ourselves, it will be a…liberation, of sorts. We shall use it to fulfill its natural obligation of watering the fields of Stensia. But the demon must first be dealt with."

"It's alright, Sorin," Runo laid a hand on his shoulder reassuringly. "I wouldn't have helped with this if I didn't believe the gods would approve. I've been praying for weeks to ask their blessing on the preparations." His words gave Sorin a measure of comfort. Members of the Stormkirk family had been high priests and priestesses for generations, and the noble house's latest scion was nothing if not responsible with his power.

"When you say, 'dealt with,' do you mean we'll be binding the demon as well as the captive river spirit?" Sorin asked his grandfather, his doubts not entirely dispelled by Edgar's relaxed bearing and cavalier attention to the alignment of his cufflinks.

"Not _bind_ so much as contain," Olivia interjected, resting her chin on the spidery fingers of one elegantly gloved hand. "There will be thirteen of us, including you, in the circle. The other eight magisters are at the ritual site now, purifying the place and making the usual offerings to the gods. I assure you, each of them is formidable. We'll cordon off an area in salt and silver and summon the demon inside it. Seven magisters will have no other obligation during the ritual but to hold the wards and restrain the demon. The four of us and one other magister will hold the wards at the center for the river spirit. Edgar will lead the ritual from the altar."

"I see." Sorin eyed Edgar with renewed suspicion. "To get so many mages together in one place, you must have been planning this for months. Why didn't you tell me?"

Edgar laid his hands on the table and looked up at the lighted chandelier as if for patience. "I didn't want you getting any ideas," he said finally. "You've been pestering me to leave ever since your mother and father passed away, and I feared if you knew I was planning this, you'd stick your nose in where it didn't belong." The acrid spite in his voice leant a menacing snap to his words. "But that doesn't matter now," he added in placation, his tone softening. "I'm sorry to have kept you in the dark for so long, but it was a necessary evil. We need your power to see the ritual through successfully, so I hope you can overcome your scruples for the good of Stensia."

"If the peasants don't matter to you, boy, do it for me," Ivan spoke up in his gravelly voice while picking a sliver of meat from between his teeth. "You're a scrawny little thing. If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't've made it till your next meal. You owe me."

Sorin stiffened, his pride bristling at the thought of being indebted to such a tactless man. But he had a point, and Sorin knew it.

"When do we head out?" he asked resignedly. Edgar straightened his coat and gave a triumphant smile, lazily waving a hand towards Runo.

"You take care of him, Stormkirk. I've some details to sort out."

"We'll leave as soon as you're ready," Runo answered, pulling Sorin's chair back with a scrape as he got up from the table and stretched his lanky legs. "You'll ride with me. Edgar has some things to discuss with Olivia and Ivan." Edgar had ceased paying attention to his grandson and was leaning across the table, deep in whispered conversation with the red-haired magister as Ivan finished stuffing himself with the last scraps on his plate. "If you have a favorite set of robes, an amulet or an aegis you'd like to wear, I suggest you get it now."

"I'll be back shortly," he said in answer. He left the dining room in big strides and sprinted up the stairs in the entry hall towards his room. The upper floor especially was starting to fall into disrepair from a lack of domestic attention. All the family servants had died or returned to their homes months ago, and house's two surviving residents had neither the resources nor the energy to devote to keeping the place clean. Sorin's bookshelves were collecting dust, his desk was a disorganized mess of magical treatises, and the white sheets of his bed were rumpled and unkempt. He glanced at his reflection in the standing gilt-edged mirror beside his wardrobe and found his own appearance sorely lacking relative to the other magisters. His plain cotton work clothes were still smudged with dirt from his trip to the forest, his ash blonde hair tied off neatly but unimpressively at the base of his neck. His hair was far more limp, thin, and scraggly than it had been in his prime, but poor nutrition had taken its toll on him, and the once square line of his cheeks and jaw looked hollow and gaunt. In the interest of time, he shrugged on a plain black overcoat over his shirt and trousers, and reached inside his top desk drawer, fumbling with one hand, until his fingers closed around the smooth red stone of his amulet.

The cold, polished Ashmouth ruby was oval-shaped, and fit neatly into the palm of his hand. The silver that had been used to forge the setting and chain had been blessed by a moon priest, and it sparkled gently as Sorin held it up to the waning afternoon light shining through his window. As he slipped it over his head, he remembered the ceremony on the night of a full moon when he and Edgar had consecrated it as his aegis, shortly after he came of age. As his magical protection, he would sorely need it tonight. He tucked the stone under his shirt next to his heart and went to rejoin the company.

Sorin trailed his hand along the banister as he came back downstairs. Runo was pacing before the door, hands clasped behind him, eyeing the empty street outside the window with apprehension.

"Sorin!" his grandfather shouted from his impromptu council at the dinner table. He turned on his heel to answer Edgar's summons and found him bent over Olivia's shoulder, appraising an object in her hands concealed from Sorin's view by its black cloth wrapping.

"You did find those ingredients I asked for?" he said impatiently, not looking up.

"The quality is questionable given the state of the soil, but yes, they're all there. The bag is next to my chair." He waited by the threshold, unwilling to interrupt the deliberations.

"I see. You may go."

Runo pushed open the door with one hand as Sorin approached. "We'd best not lose any more time. The ritual site is in the mountains, several hours away by horse."

In the hazy dusk outside, Stormkirk's servant had already mounted the driver's bench and held the fine leather straps of the reins between his fingers. Runo opened the door himself, and invited Sorin into the blue upholstered interior with a wave of his hand. Sorin mounted the footboard and scooted over on the seat, Runo quickly following and shutting the door behind them. The driver gave a snap of the reins and the carriage lurched into motion, setting off down the road just as the sun dipped below the horizon.


	4. IV Harrowing Journey

Author's Note: I assume magic in the MTG universe to be land-based, hence drawing on the five colors of mana with their corresponding land types. I take the liberty of assuming that mages can draw on mana colors that do not match their exact geographical location (e.g. using blue magic while in a forest), as long as the appropriate color is present somewhere on the plane in question. The magic that will come into play in the rest of the story operates on this premise, but some chaos magic may still work its way in regardless.

Harrowing Journey

* * *

The driver pushed the emaciated chestnut horses as fast as they could go, snapping the whip at irregular intervals as the last traces of sunlight faded from the russet sky. Through the thin glass of the window, the stark skeletons of bare trees sped past Sorin's eyes as their road wound upwards into the mountains. The frail, pallid light of the stars was only intermittently visible through the haze in the air, and the new moon saw Stensia plunged into blackness now that the sun had set. With a muttered charm, the servant driver conjured a globe of light into the lantern hanging from the carriage roof outside.

"He knows a little practical magic," Runo explained, crossing his arms and leaning back into the cushioned seat. "How to conjure light, fire, that sort of thing. Not quite magister caliber, but more than adequate for a hired man."

Sorin nodded. "How long have you known about this?" He asked, his eyes fixed on the soaring mountain peaks that loomed in the teeth of the Geier Reach. The carriage jostled him against the wall as it struggled up the steep hills.

"Since last month," he admitted. "I thought Edgar had told you."

"That condescending speech of his was the first I'd heard of it. I don't like the idea of performing a summoning and a binding all at once, and not with all this secrecy. How powerful is the demon, exactly?"

Runo shrugged his shoulders and looked away uncomfortably. "He's quite strong, Sorin. That's why we have seven magisters to contain him. Just keep your wits about you, hold up your part of the wards, and everything will be fine."

The road was starting to narrow, and the withered trees thinned out in the rocky soil as the earth sloped steeply upward. If the provincial authorities had paid any attention to this stretch of road in the past few years, it didn't show it. The driver checked the horses' pace and steered them clumsily around a rut, lurching the carriage precipitously to one side before it righted itself with a thud.

Sorin grunted as he straightened himself up from the wall he'd been thrown against. The blue painted sides of the carriage pressed tightly around the two men, jostling them shoulder to shoulder as the vehicle bounced over the unkempt road. "Are we heading for a pass?" Sorin leaned an arm against the wall and examined Runo's impassive face. "I haven't traveled this road before."

"To be honest, I haven't either. Edgar picked the site, I think he said it was some sort of isolated clearing. You know how choosy he can be about anything to do with his projects."

"Do you know the demon's name?"

Runo blushed. "Yes, but I can't tell you. It wouldn't be wise to even say it before the wards are in place and we're ready to begin."

"He's that powerful?"

"I'm just being cautious. You can't be too careful on the night of a new moon."

His carefully chosen words got Sorin's hackles up. "Then why don't we postpone the ritual until the logical time for it: the full moon on summer solstice, when protective magic will be at its strongest?"

"It's Edgar's idea. Don't ask me why."

"If you don't trust him, why did you agree to help him summon a demon?" Sorin glared, righteous indignation causing his fists to clench.

"Because what we're doing tonight is the only way to save Stensia." Runo answered firmly. "I don't have all the answers, but you don't need to worry about anything going wrong. I know all the magisters personally. The seven who will be managing the demon are all competent, level-headed, and well versed in summoning magic. Vera Athelgard is leading the preparations and, trust me, nothing will go awry on her watch. She was the dean of magical theory while I was a university student in Thraben. She'll make sure all the wards are laid out properly."

The carriage pressed tightly against the mountain rock as the earth to one side fell away into an unfathomable cliff. Some pebbles knocked off the edge by the staccato beat of the horses' hooves tumbled down into the sightless dark. Ever upward they climbed, sweat flecking the horses' bony flanks as the driver's steady hands steered them away from the brink. Sorin stared out at the jagged mountains silhouetted against the darkness and touched the smooth red stone of his aegis for comfort in the gloom.

"It's going to be alright," Runo offered after a while. "The thirteen most powerful mages in Stensia can manage a demon and a river spirit. We aren't second-rate demonologists trying to summon a lord of the Ashmouth."

Sorin's sense of foreboding was not alleviated by the attempted jest. Runo was, to all appearances, as taken in by Edgar's scheme as everyone else was. For a moment, feeling more isolated than ever after listening to more of Runo's prevarications, he considered boycotting the ritual altogether. Let them summon their demon, he'd keep following the road into the next province and build a life for himself away from Stensia's famines and Edgar's machinations. But the consequences of doing so weighed heavily on his conscience. The ritual had been planned for thirteen mages. If something were to go wrong in his absence, if the demon were to break free and kill the summoners, or even rampage through Stensia, the weight of their deaths would stay with him for the rest of his life.

The two men sat in silence as the path leveled out a little and the bumping and shaking of the carriage quieted down. Outside the luminescent radius emanating from the servant's conjured light, the creeping darkness deepened to absolute pitch. The creaking of the axles and stamping of the horses' hooves were the only sounds apart from the whispered passage of the wind through the mountains' teeth.

Gradually, the barren rock gave way to the towering spires of old coniferous trees. Blighted like the rest of Stensia, their fallen needles formed a carpet on the forest floor as their bare brown branches jutted into the night. The ordinary chirping and chattering sounds of birds and animals were nowhere to be heard. Mountain streams and natural springs should have sustained these elevated woodlands as the fields withered and died, but the drought's grasping fingers had clawed their way to the outermost edges of the province and spared nothing within their reach. Runo sat perfectly still as they crossed the lifeless waste, the gold trimming on his blue coat shining faintly in the dark as it fell across his knees. He watched the road expectantly, following the careening sweep of the conjured light with eager eyes as it cast shadows through the forest. At the edge of the tree line, a battered wooden signpost pointed the way to Kessig. Sorin fidgeted uneasily at the indication of how far they had traveled. There should be no reason to hold the ritual this far distant from human habitation. If the magisters were as competent as everyone kept assuring him, the Markovs' basement should have provided enough space and privacy to carry the thing out successfully.

The driver gave a sharp tug on the reins, and the horses came to a stumbling halt. Runo leapt out the door and took stock of their surroundings, folding his arms impatiently across his chest. Sorin scooted over the seat and followed him out, wrapping his black coat tightly around his thin frame as his breath misted in the mountain chill. The smell of decaying plant matter hung thickly in the frigid air, and the moonless sky, broken up by the encircling mountain peaks, loomed black as the void. They had stopped at a crossroads, and the barren forest with its dead brown needles hemmed them in from every side. His blue-gold livery strangely out of place in the isolated wilds, the driver jumped from his seat and checked on the horses, soothing their agitated stamping with gentle touches and quiet whispers.

"This is the place, milord?" he inquired of Runo, stealing a glance at his master as Stormkirk paced slowly around the intersection of the two dirt roads.

"Yes, Martin. You did well getting us here so early. There'll be some extra pay waiting for you when we get home." He stared off into the distance, not meeting the servant's anxious gaze. Sorin surveyed the scene with apprehension, trying and failing to discern the location of Edgar's mysterious clearing from the line of the trees. That Edgar had picked a site so far off the beaten path boded poorly for his intentions. Sorin's hand strayed to the pendant of his aegis, but the comfort of the little ritual did not settle the nervous energy that hummed at the periphery of his aura.

A shrieking blast of wind shattered the stillness, and the horses snorted and thrashed in their fittings. As the lantern swung wildly in the upset, the blasted forest cast leering shadows at terrible angles in the sudden illumination. Malevolent black energy coalesced in the center of the crossroads, an awful niblis of malice wresting itself into physical form out of the void of the new moon.

"Watch yourself!" Runo barked at his servant as blue fire crackled at the tips of his fingers. Martin struggled to control the rioting horses with his shaking hands and cowered back. The crossroads geist was enormous, and the seething black hatred of its energy leant it power beyond the scope of an ordinary spirit. Its slitted red eyes burned like the brimstone fires of the Ashmouth and leered at the petrified servant with hunger. Sorin took a front stance before the emerging spectre and grounded himself in the earth, reaching deep into the dying lands of Stensia for pure white mana. The magical energy swept up in a rush through his core as he pooled it into his hands, shimmering white challenging the rotted black of the infuriated geist. In his mind's eye, he imagined the writhing tendrils of the dark spirit being swept up in a blast of his white energy and banished back to the void. He held the image in his sight, pouring all his willpower into its realization, and let loose at the geist the purifying mana converged in his hands.

"Exile." The command word he had learned so long ago flowed as a natural manifestation of his will, tearing into the seething body of the geist and sending it screaming into the ether. As the magical energies around the crossroads shuddered and settled back to stillness, Runo lowered the blue shields he had readied around Martin and turned back to Sorin.

"Nicely done," he complimented, straightening up and starting to regain composure. "You acted more surely than I. Perhaps Edgar was right to include you in this after all."

Martin had again busied himself attending to the horses, his hands running gently along their sweat-flaked flanks as he fought to keep them calm. "I don't expect there to be any more trouble," Runo told him authoritatively. "Stay with the carriage, point the way to the next group that comes through here, and sleep if you can." Martin nodded absently as Stormkirk cast an appraising eye over the forest.

"This is where we leave the road, Sorin. Follow me."

Runo led the way into the woods, snapping twigs under the fine brown leather of his boots as the mages moved deeper into the trees. As the lone lantern of Runo's carriage receded farther and farther behind them, he conjured another globe of magical to light to brighten their path through the dark shadows of the dead forest. Sorin was hopelessly lost, and the absence of the moon and stars left him with no means of orienting himself. How Stormkirk knew they were moving in the right direction was beyond him. The uniform desiccation of the earth left few landmarks, the dead brown trees and underbrush stretching endlessly off into the night.

"Stop!" The high, nasally voice came from just outside the scope of Runo's magical light, from a frail cloaked figure concealed in the shadows. "Your names, please," he demanded.

Runo held up his open palms in placation. "Is that you, Dragomir? Why don't you come out where we can see you."

The man who stepped into the radius of conjured visibility was short and squat, with plain green robes and a balding head framed by a fringe of greying brown hair. Sweat beaded across his brow as he struggled to summon green magic for a defensive spell; pale and sickly, the green fire trailed listlessly around his short fingers before sputtering out into the air. Sorin knew green mana, and the mages who drew on it, had suffered as the life and natural energy had slowly been choked out of Stensia by the drought, but the situation was obviously more dire than he realized. Runo laughed at the man's painstaking efforts.

"Dragomir, it's me, Runo Stormkirk. If you don't recognize me by now, your memory must be worse than I thought. This young man is Sorin Markov, Edgar's grandson. May we proceed to the ritual site now? Edgar sent us on ahead."

Dissipating the weak spell with a wave of his hand, Dragomir turned and motioned them to follow. "It's not far. Vera warned me to be careful."

"The lines of the circle are already drawn?" Runo asked, picking his way through the trees after the green mage.

"Yes, that's been taken care of. Don't disrupt anything," Dragomir ordered over his shoulder to Sorin as he pushed aside the spindly limbs of a dead tree. "Vera wants to purify each of us before we enter the circle."

That made sense for a summoning. Bringing excess magical energy into a summoning circle could be dangerous.

"All the preparations have been taken care of?" Sorin probed. The energy he had called on to banish the crossroads geist still hummed through his body, making him restless and wakeful in the night and eager for the challenge of the ritual. Dragomir kept wending their way through the forest.

"Yes, yes, everything's ready. Except for what Edgar's bringing himself," he added as an afterthought.

"What's my grandfather bringing?"

"Just some things for the altar." Dragomir sniffed, pausing as the murmuring of human voices up ahead reached them through the trees. "Not long now."

The green mage's offhand dismissal of Sorin's questions only heightened the latter's unease. The objects on the altar would be crucial to the success of the summoning ritual. There would be artifacts to amplify the lead mage's power and protect him, as well as offerings to induce the spirits into the circle. Since a demon was involved, the offerings were likely to be gruesome, but Edgar's extra precautions surrounding this centerpiece of the summoning were far from encouraging. The group continued in silence until the dead woods thinned out into Edgar's clearing.

The hushed voices they had heard at a distance fell silent at their approach, and seven heads turned to examine them as Dragomir waved them inside. The site was broad, spacious, and flanked by the towering peaks of several mountains that rose impassively into the sky. Dominating the center of the clearing, the magical circle had been laid out in measured lines of pure white salt that sparkled ethereally in the yellow glow of conjured light. Dragomir rushed over to the assembled group and scuttled back in the company of a tall woman who drew near to Sorin and Runo in a few powerful strides. Her long black robes fluttered out behind her over the frozen earth, and as she approached, the silver pentagram around her neck hummed with magical energy. She was Edgar's age, if not older, and a smile brightened the deep lines of her face as she embraced Runo in welcome.

"Runo, my old student. It's been too long. Don't suppose that two hundred page monstrosity of an incantation research paper ever did you any good as a priest?"

"It gave me something to apply myself to as a hot-blooded young mage," he answered, returning the gesture with an affectionate pat on the back. Dragomir excused himself with an obsequious bow and left to resume his post. "Vera, I'd like you to meet Sorin Markov."

The white-haired mage scrutinized Sorin with a critical eye. Her thin lips pursed in appraisal as her sharp brown eyes took in his haggard appearance.

"I've a great deal of respect for your grandfather, Sorin, and he tells me you know your way around a spellbook. Do you understand what you'll be doing tonight?"

Sorin struggled to give a truthful answer in spite of his limited knowledge. "I'll be holding the wards from one arm of the pentagram. That's all I know."

"And what kind of work have you done with wards previously?"

"I specialize in white magic. I've held wards for summoning rituals before, though admittedly never anything of this magnitude," he conceded.

Vera's angular, wizened face was inscrutable. "You'll have to weave your magic together with four other mages in the pentagram tonight. Can you do that?"

Sorin nodded. "I've done some work of that nature with my grandfather before. I can handle it."

"That'll have to do, then," she sighed. "You're the only one of the mages here whom I haven't personally seen do quality spellwork. I don't like it, but I'll take Edgar at his word when he says you're competent. I'll be leading our little group from the apex of the pentagram. You'll be standing at the lower right arm, next to Runo and across from Ivan Falkenrath. Stay focused, follow my lead, and you'll come out alright."

The old magister grabbed Runo's arm with one bony hand and steered him over to join the other mages, leaving Sorin alone with his thoughts. Isolated in the crags of the Geier Reach, the forlorn emptiness of the ritual space with its exact lines of salt and frightened magisters bore silent witness to the impending fruition of Edgar's designs. The mountain peaks pressed in on them from all sides, looming sentinels unresponsive to the preparations underway and the forces soon to be invoked. Sorin sat down on the hard earth and searched for his magical center, but its calm was elusive in the sibilant buzz of nervous energy that hung in the air.

The magisters held their breath as the snapping of branches announced Dragomir's scurried return to the clearing. He came at a run, his green robes smudged with the brown detritus of the forest and his wispy hair ruffled across the crown of his bald head.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he gasped, "I present to you the arch magister, Edgar Markov."

* * *

Ulquiorra9000- Thanks for reviewing! Glad you like the story so far. I briefly touch on pre-Avacynian beliefs in chapter three, but I hope to look more into it later once Avacyn comes on the scene. I imagine the conflict between the ascendant Church of Avacyn and the followers of the old gods must have been interesting to watch.


	5. V Unhallowed Pact

Unhallowed Pact

* * *

Deathly stillness descended on the clearing as Edgar Markov entered the ritual space in clipped, deliberate strides. The huddled magisters stayed their whispers as his merciless gaze swept across their trembling forms and dismissed them, settling at last on the shimmering white lines of salt and the gleaming silver bowl at the altar. He stopped just short of the circle, the unforgiving phosphorescence of the conjured lights casting the deep lines of his face in sharp relief against the darkness of the forest. The combined weight of years, hunger, and hardship wove a heavy mantle across his emaciated shoulders, but the authority of his presence commanded the attention of each and every magister. His eyes followed the sweep of every ward, the line of every sigil, demanding perfection in his creation as he tested the circle's strength against the blackened tendrils of his magic.

Olivia and Ivan followed in the arch magister's wake, Ivan with Sorin's rucksack and Olivia with her own cloth-wrapped bundle concealed in the folds of her black cloak. Martin, Runo's driver, stumbled along behind in his blue-gold livery, eyes vacant and glassy. Sorin raised an eyebrow at the presence of Stromkirk's servant, who sat down by the salt lines obediently where Ivan pushed him. Perhaps there was more than one geist at the crossroads, but it didn't make sense to bring the man here.

Ivan's ostentatious red coat looked absurd in the subdued company, who stole incredulous glances at the newcomers as they trotted at Edgar's heels. Sorin summoned the courage to approach his grandfather, a dozen doubts and questions vying for place in his mind, but Edgar clasped his hands behind him and studiously ignored the interloper. The altar had been laid out exactly as he wished—a symbol for one of the four elements at each corner, the silver offering bowl reeking to his trained alchemist's nose of blood and severed digits. The final enticements his grandson had dug up out of the earth now rested in the hands of the most unlikely, and most impetuous, of his accomplices, and the crux of the operation was safe, for the moment, in Lady Voldaren's keeping. His inspection complete, he turned to his second in command without favoring his grandson with a glance.

"Arch magister," Vera addressed him cautiously, "Now that you've arrived, I should purify everyone before we begin."

Edgar nodded indifferently while the circle held its breath. "You've been as thorough as I could have hoped. Give me those," he snapped over his shoulder at Ivan and Olivia, who handed over their burdens in silence. The expanse of the forest faded into indistinguishable black just beyond the lighted tree line, and in the moon's absence the magical lights did little to fend off the encroaching darkness. The forms of the magisters cast long shadows across the withered grass as Vera led them to assemble around a small salt circle, only a few feet in diameter, set at a distance from the summoning circle near the fringe of the forest. Sorin hung back from the group, unsettled by his grandfather's disdain and the hushed conversations that ceased at his approach.

"Form a line, mages," Vera barked, the long sleeves of her black robes fluttering as she moved into position next to the circle. Edgar was the first to step inside, treading carefully across the threshold in his polished leather shoes. Vera drew on white mana for a simple purification, stilling Edgar's excess energy and severing any outside mana connections the powerful magister had carried with him. The salt line flashed white for a brief second, and Edgar, newly focused, exited the circle to await the preparation of his compatriots.

From his place at the back of the queue, Sorin watched his grandfather anxiously. Edgar paced the outer edges of the enormous ring of salt that closed off the summoning space, his purified magical presence reverberating with the indomitable strength of his will. As arch magister, Edgar would serve as the focus of the circle's magical energy during the ritual. His intent manifested through the wards and spells would be the first, and greatest, barrier against the forces that would be evoked. The old man's tenacity was infamous, but Sorin's hair stood on end at the thought of his grandfather confronting a demon. He had heard the stories, whispered around the fire by Edgar, Runo, and their friends over drinks in better times, of the desperate, the arrogant, and the stupid who had meddled with the creatures in the past. The lucky ones survived the summoning only to forfeit their souls after a gruesome and untimely death. More commonly, the hapless summoner would fall prey to the demon's cunning in the circle itself, and the authorities would have to be called in later to scrape the gore off the walls.

At the seven points of the heptagram just inside the circle, seven mages one by one took up their places. Their job would be easier in some respects than in a standard summoning; no bargain needed to be struck with the demon summoned tonight, which reduced the potential for fatal mistakes. Protective runes lined in salt, most of which Sorin recognized from Edgar's books, had been laid at each apex of the star, one at the feet of every mage. At the heptagram's center, a five-pointed star finished out the circle, with the altar inside it. Tradition held the moon god was blind each new moon night, but Sorin prayed to him all the same, desperately entreating for protection from the demon and freedom for the guardian spirit of the Geier River.

Edgar watched the mages take up their posts as he had imagined it a hundred times before, in a hundred obsessive mental rehearsals of this turning point in history, like the tumblers of a lock clicking into place. As the mages centered themselves and reached into the barren, blasted earth for mana, the circle started to hum with a low rumble of energy, and he smiled.

The dark-haired woman in front of Sorin took a step forward into Vera's circle. The salt line flashed white, and she left for her station, robes hissing as they trailed along the dead grass. Vera's face was grim as Sorin approached, her lips a thin slash across the sharp line of her jaw. He let the ancient magister's calm energy sweep over him, stilling the nervous buzz of his emotions and clearing away the ephemeral connections of his magic to the world outside. He turned his focus inward, toward his body's connection with the white mana in the earth, banishing all distractions as he too followed the lines of salt to his place in the circle. The seven mages of the outer ring were strange people he did not recognize, save the scuttling Dragomir, who had abandoned his tortured efforts to raise green mana from the ruined earth and settled for blue instead. There were sigils, strange sigils, in each arm of the inner star; a lowly river spirit shouldn't need such precautions, but Sorin's intuition told him they were runes of binding, and they reverberated with power.

Runo smiled as Sorin walked up beside him, but said not a word as he readied himself to hold up the binding wards. The noxious smell from the altar was overpowering, and Sorin averted his eyes from the reeking bowl as he struggled to maintain his calm. Red mana seethed across from him in the air around Ivan Falkenrath, searing his face with chaotic and barely controlled heat. Sorin pushed back with white magic as he established his presence in the circle, uncertain how the destructive force of Ivan's magic could serve as a shield but determined all the same. At Sorin's feet, a lighted red candle invoked the power of red mana for the circle, matched at the other points of the pentagram by candles green, white, blue, and black. The cold mountain air chilled him as he drew a deep breath and wove his magic together with Runo's calming blue, Ivan's furious red, and Olivia's forceful black. He felt, rather than saw, Vera take her place at the pentagram's apex, the guiding force of her magic binding them all together.

Then Edgar entered the circle. His very steps were commanding, charged with focus as he willed the circle's magic to shape itself around him. Westward he paced, after the sun's path, pouring his energy into the lines of salt while the twelve subordinate magisters poured their energy into him. First the circle, then the heptagram, then the pentagram he walked, each step an act of magic that charged the circle with power. Sorin lost himself in concentration, the distinctions between his own presence and Runo and Ivan's to either side fading as the outer ring of seven and the inner ring of five willed Edgar Markov the power to call up a demon.

Having circled the pentagram, the altar loomed before the arch magister like something out of a dream. As he plucked the last three parts of the offering from their satchel and added them to the runecarved bowl—hemlock, mandrake, and raven's claw—it seemed the pulse of the world flowed through him, had anointed him above all mortals as savior, arbiter, and god. His fingers trembled as he withdrew the final item he had stowed in the sack; the cold black Ashmouth obsidian was smooth to the touch, and the sigil drawn at the center shone dully of dried blood in the candlelight. Reverently he lifted up the bowl and placed the tablet beneath, and with fire conjured to the tips of his fingers, set the contents ablaze.

The smoke pierced Sorin's eyes and the smell turned his stomach, but he forced the distractions from his mind as he threw his concentration into the wards they had raised. He was a battery, his sole purpose to power Edgar and the wards. It shouldn't matter to him that incense ought to be burned for a river spirit, while the stench at the altar reeked of burning flesh.

Edgar raised his hands heavenward, as though entreating the sky itself. His voice was deep and sonorant as it rang out in call. "Here, in the blindness of the moon…"

"We summon you who are black pitch," eleven voices echoed the answer. Fear chilled Sorin through and jarred his concentration. He hadn't been told about this. No one had mentioned a chant. "We call you here in the darkness, we call you from the darkness, we call you to the darkness."

The earth trembled, and a shockwave of sulfurous black magic rattled against the wards. The circles held, but the odor of brimstone spread outward from the altar, and a blazing heat seared the mages' faces. Edgar's feverish energy held the mages together, filling the circle with frenzy as he threw back his head. "Here you will be bound in silver and in salt!"

"We bind you here to hear us. We bind you that we may ask you. We bind you here to help us. We bind you here to pay you."

Sorin frantically pulled up magic from the earth, wrapping himself in white mana to stave off the pall of terrible, wrong energy that smothered the clearing in clouds of smoke. The thing that was taking shape at the altar was an abomination, its very presence profaning the physical realm. It twisted and writhed as the binding spell forced it into corporeal form, red scales covering a massive body whose fingers ended in claws, the head with yellow slitted eyes crowned in curving twin horns. Its breath smelled of smoke and fire, but the unholy magic rippling out from its body in waves made Sorin double over in agony. He reeled to his feet, stumbling as the sheer power of the demon's presence made the physical world flicker from view. Sorin's vision drowned in the colors of magic, the feeble white-blue-red-black of the wards paling against the waves of poisonous black sludge pouring off the demon.

The physical world returned to him slowly, felt out through his connection with the mana in the earth. The demon's eyes fixed on him, hungry points of flame that leered into his soul and crawled inside his head. He felt the pit of his stomach drop out and he was falling, falling into an abyss of pain and malice. Sorin knew these tricks, knew every mage in the circle was feeling the same revulsion, but holding his focus was a struggle against the grasping intrusion of the demon's presence. The wards held, Ivan's anger fueling a surge of red mana that rebuffed the intrusion. Its dark energy seethed in the magical chains, but the bonds resisted.

He laughed, a harsh, rasping sound that made Sorin sick with fear. "Edgar Markov!" The guttural tones of his voice shaped the human sounds with effort. "How considerate of you to honor your end of our deal."

Edgar rested his hands on either side of the offering bowl, the foul black smoke still wafting from the center obscuring his gaze. "Shilgengar, we have summoned you here to bargain." His tone was proud, uncompromising. The demon paced in his magical cage and raked his long yellow claws against the wards.

"You put together a fine ritual, wizard. Deceiving your grandson so completely…a masterful piece of work." He trailed a claw against the shimmering barrier before Edgar's face, mocking the thin veil of magic that insulated the arch magister from his talons.

"You will barter with me, Shilgengar, and me alone. The other members of this circle do not concern you," Edgar shot back.

"Oh, I disagree. I'm sure young Sorin would love to know what you've been hiding from him. Why don't you remind the good mages of the circle what offerings you used to summon me?"

"I will not indulge these petulant—"

"Then _I_ will not indulge your pathetic desire for immortality." Shilgengar's form loomed massive over the circle, muscle and scale rippling in the sulfurous smoke. "Consider your position, _magister_," he sneered, "I am your only hope of attaining what you seek. Should you displease me, there will not be a second chance."

A long pause hung tersely in the air as Edgar squared his shoulders. "I shall grant this concession in good faith, demon. The blood of a virgin, drowned in water bearing the full moon's reflection. The fingers and toes of three infants murdered on the day of their consecration. The heart of a priest. Incense, herbs from the fens, hemlock, mandrake, and a raven's claw."

Sorin's heart felt cold, his mind detached from his body, numb and disbelieving. How many innocents had Edgar murdered to summon this monster?

The demon's mouth twisted into a grin, revealing rows of yellow fangs. "Was that really so hard? You're being coy, Edgar. I don't appreciate your efforts to hide our relationship."

"That's enough. You have been called to bargain, and bargain you must," Edgar snapped. "I offer you a human sacrifice and the blood of an angel."

"Yes, I did demand those things the last time we spoke. Remember how you sent Sorin on a fool's errand into town to buy yourself time for our conversation?"

"In exchange," he spat, hands clenching as his anger rippled through the circle, "I require you to perform the agreed upon ritual conferring immortality and blood feeding on each person in this circle."

Sorin dropped his hands, and the wards faltered. Blood feeding. Immortality. Edgar had deceived him, used him, to and end so terrible he could barely fathom its depravity. A wave of the demon's toxic magic overwhelmed him immediately, suffocating and choking as the demon forced through the breach.

_You are the sacrifice, little Markov. He never intended to spare you. Take him instead, punish him for his lies. Cut his throat at my altar, and all the power he seeks will be yours._

His whispers hissed inside Sorin's head, laced with desire and riddled with poison. Red haze obscured Sorin's eyes as he wrestled the demon; reptilian limbs and claws grasped at him and fought to drag him down. He was thrashing, screaming, in his head or not he couldn't be sure, as the demon's strong arms forced him under and he drowned in a sea of red. He gasped, grappled, fought his way up; it was his body, his mind, and he lashed out with magic to drive the spirit out.

_You cannot win, little mage. Give in to me. Let me take revenge for you. I'll let you snap his neck between your hands._

Runo's magic shimmered faintly at the corners of his eyes, and then the demon was gone, thrown back by a blue reflective spell. Sorin shuddered as he raised his wards again, desperately grasping at white mana to scrub the pollution from his body. Back inside his prison, Shilgengar snarled and seethed.

"Shilgengar," Edgar heaved a patronizing sigh, "The other lords of the Ashmouth aren't known for tolerating weakness. If word gets out you were bested by a human, you'll have bigger problems to deal with than our little arrangement."

"Give me my sacrifice, human. Then we'll talk."

Edgar smiled triumphantly. "I offer the life of Martin Krieger, to be killed on this altar by a cut to the throat."

"Hah!" the demon snorted derisively. "You think to content me with a servant, a carriage driver? I demand a magister. It's only fitting your circle should pay for your gift in the blood of your own."

"I refuse. You will accept my proposal or forfeit your sacrifice."

"Give me Sorin. The blood of your kinsman is a fair price for what I offer."

"I will do no such thing!" Edgar shouted. "You will take Martin or I shall send you back to hell."

"Perhaps a compromise is in order. Give me Idalene instead."

In the larger circle, a dark-haired woman in long blue robes balked, and ran. The outer wards crumbled behind her. "Stop her!" Edgar ordered, and a scramble ensued. Vera doubled down and poured her energy into the wards surrounding the pentagram, now the only barrier separating the five magisters and Edgar from the demon's teeth. Shilgengar stayed perfectly still, smiling inside the fragile barrier thrown up to restrain him. Sorin's heart sank as he heard a flurry of spells behind him, and the screaming woman was caught and subdued.

"Magisters, reestablish the wards," Edgar instructed. The six mages, one short after the entranced Idalene was shoved inside the outer ring, did as ordered, and the second barrier was soon reset.

"Shilgengar," Edgar began again, "In accordance with your request, I offer you the life of Idalene Bonafort. I shall administer the sacrifice on the altar, by means of a cut to the throat."

A dark chuckle sounded in the demon's throat. "This arrangement is acceptable. Make sure her blood drains into my offering bowl."

Edgar's face was ashen. "Mages of the inner circle, prepare to reshape your wards to accommodate the sacrifice. Idalene, please come forward."

The entranced woman stepped towards the altar at the arch magister's command. Sorin obediently shifted the configuration of the spells to allow her to pass, but his heart wrenched as her thin shoulder brushed against him on the way to her death. Her wide brown eyes gazed unseeing into the candlelight, her brown curls bouncing softly with each step she took towards her executioner. He couldn't bear to watch, but he couldn't tear his eyes from the scene; Edgar, his eyes hard, reaching out to take her hand, whispering false reassurances; Shilgengar, exultant, shivering with anticipation; Idalene, beautiful, compliant as Edgar guided her to the altar; the knife, gleaming silver, parting the soft white skin of her throat where Edgar forced her head over the bowl; the blood, dark and red and spurting in bursts from the gaping slash.

Edgar's fingers gripped the young woman's curls as he threw the body away from the altar. It crumpled to the ground and lay motionless, dark blue robes spilling onto the grass. The arch magister pressed his fingers into the sides of the bowl and looked up at the demon.

"There's something so satisfying about killing the young and innocent, wouldn't you agree, Edgar?" Shilgengar laughed as he savored the spectacle. "Now, the angel blood. Add it to the bowl."

The package wrapped in black satin Olivia had borne lay innocuously on the table. The fine fabric was soft between Edgar's fingers as he unwrapped it, layer by layer. Inside, a small crystal phial held the viscous silver liquid he had gone to such pains to acquire. He twisted the stopper until it popped from its place and tipped it over the blood-soaked bowl on the altar. It was a magically enhanced container, enchanted beyond its physical capacity. And it poured, and poured, as Edgar upended the phial into the reeking vessel, and still the liquid kept flowing. Somewhere, in a part of him that was still sane, Sorin knew he should worry about how his grandfather came to possess angel blood. The rest of him couldn't stop staring at the deathly white arm stretched out on the grass by the altar.

The final drop of silvery blood rippled the bowl's contents, and Edgar set the phial down on top of its wrapping. Shilgengar pressed against the wards, eyeing the offering vessel hungrily.

"Release me, wizard. I would drink of my offering."

"No. We shall proceed with the ritual."

"The final piece of the spell is contingent on my cooperation. No wards, no restraints."

"You insult my intelligence, demon. You will not be released."

"This is not what we agreed upon," Shilgengar hissed. "You are bound to honor our contract. The gift must be received from my hands."

"The contract stipulates that you will not inflict harm upon any member of this circle. I have no reason to believe you intend to honor your side of the arrangement."

"You need my blood, human. Release me as you promised, and you shall have it."

Edgar pushed back from the table with a gleam in his eye. Sorin couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Drop the wards," the arch magister said with a sigh. Vera stared at him, jaw agape. "Drop them, magister," he repeated.

Sorin shivered reflexively as the spells came down. The demon stretched to his full height, claws flashing, as smoke roiled off his form. He seized the offering bowl in the claws of one hand and drank deeply of the sacrifices. Blood trickled down his chin, only to be scraped up on one massive claw which his tongue flickered out to lick.

"As promised," he rasped, "I give you my blood as a symbol of our covenant." With one claw, he slit the palm of one red scaled hand. The blood steamed and hissed as it dissolved into the silver bowl, and a malicious smile bared the demon's fangs. "It is done. I offer you immortality, and the power to walk as masters among your fellow men. You first, Edgar."

The arch magister stepped out from behind the altar, reached up to grasp the bowl with shaking hands and tilted it toward his lips. One swallow and he doubled over, clinging to Runo's arm for support. He staggered to his feet to point a shaking finger and gasp, "Sorin."

"No!" Sorin stepped back as every eye in the circle fixed on him. "I'll have no part of this."

Edgar was bent over, a hand pressed against his side. "I did _not_ go to all this trouble," he choked, "to see you refuse the gift! You will drink, boy, or you will not leave this place."

"Sorin," Runo said calmly, "the pain is only temporary. After just a little while, you'll be more powerful than you could possibly imagine. Please," he cajoled, "for your grandfather."

"Fool." Ivan grabbed Sorin roughly and shoved him forward. The demon loomed over him, fiery eyes leering, and the hateful bowl was raised to his mouth. Blood, Idalene's blood, and the reeking sulfur of the demon's blood, and the bittersweet sting of the angelic blood, hit him in a rush, until he too was choking and doubled over at Shilgengar's feet.

He could hear the demon's laughter as he rolled over on the grass, agony searing through his veins and ringing in his ears. His every nerve was burning, his eyes obscured by a red haze and his lungs filled with the demon's toxic smoke. Edgar had lied to him, he was dying, his body couldn't bear such torment. A fire spread through him, a spark igniting a flame, and the world collapsed into darkness.

* * *

Author's Note: Many thanks to my fiance for ensuring the mechanics of the ritual made magical sense. This chapter was tricky for that reason.

Ulquiorra9000- Thanks for pointing out my spelling mistake; it's hard to believe I've been mispronouncing Runo's name since Innistrad came out, but that just shows my bias for English morphemes. I'll get around to editing the chapters with the Stormkirk spelling eventually. And yes, the feasting/communion literary device was intentional. It has some significance for Edgar specifically that I hope to flesh out later. :)

The-lazy-bum- Thanks for reviewing! I hope future chapters do not disappoint.


	6. VI Into the Void

Into the Void

* * *

The void is timeless, infinite, tangential with reality but not bounded by it. It is blind, yet contains vision within itself, in isolated pockets of stardust hemmed in by its eternity. Those few who manage to break through the confining stitches find that vision is a useless organ, for the void is neither physical nor spiritual, but something altogether different. It is the silence at the end of all things, and the anticipation of the music by which all things begin. Gods did not create it, though a few have walked its paths. Time cannot destroy it, for the void is outside of time, and linear continuity contains itself within those few outposts of existence amenable to its influence. That interaction with the void which transports us from one plane to another we refer to as a planeswalk, though the term is somewhat fallacious. It cannot properly be described as a "walk," for the physical action of walking is not possible in the void. Neither is "plane" a truthful descriptor of the infinite realities that exist within its bounds outside the physical construct of space, overlapping and permeating and all present at once. When we speak of a planeswalk, what we mean can best be elucidated as a transaction with unreality which has the effect of conveying us between two dimensions by means of a temporary cessation of existence.

-S. Markov, _Treatise on the Metaphysicalities of Planeswalking_

* * *

When Sorin Markov was first catapulted headlong into the Blind Eternities, he should have liked to have a book. Or perhaps a scroll, a datapad, a compilation of knowledge in a form recognizable in some universe, to explain what was happening to him and why his body had disappeared. But no such book existed at the time, so he had to make do.

In the nebulous black around him, a hundred thousand realities in a riot of colors forced themselves on his perception all at once. It is not fair to say he saw them, for in the pure consciousness of his existence, he did not did not have form, nor eyes. He did not have legs, yet he moved; the terrified confusion of his intent tossed him about in the extradimensional maelstrom and yanked him haphazardly through space. Entire universes passed by as he struggled to orient himself by the self which the void had obliterated.

He remembered Edgar, doubled over in pain, pointing a bony finger at him and ordering him to drink from the profane silver bowl steeped to the brim in Idalene's blood. He remembered the demon's slitted sulfur-yellow eyes, the rusted taste of blood in his mouth and the fiery agony wracking his body. But Edgar didn't vanish. Sorin had seen him, curled up like a child on the grass near the altar with his teeth gritted and hands white-knuckle clenched. Edgar was still there in that godsforsaken mountain valley, while Sorin was—where? Not a world, certainly not his world, ripped from his body and tossed into space. Unless Edgar had meant for this to happen all along, unless Edgar were here too, a few minutes behind him, lost in the same vortex of oblivion and unreality.

Had Sorin been an ordinary sentient creature, being ripped from the physical world alone would have broken his mind. As it was, he tried to rationalize. To his old understanding of things, there were two worlds, physical and spiritual, separated by a veil, and nothing else beside; but the void with its twisting whorls of indescribable star-crossed color was a world all its own, one his understanding could never have anticipated. At any rate, the spiritual world was inhabited by gods, spirits, and the souls of the dead, and here he was alone, neither body, nor spirit, nor soul. Completely alone, yet surrounded on all sides by worlds and their masses of inhabitants seething and roiling, alive and not, deafening and silent and churning in vast, amorphous darkness.

Perhaps, and he panicked to think it, Shilgengar was right. The demon's rasping voice grated in his mind where Sorin had dropped his guard and let him in, the sounds guttural and inhuman and cloaked in suffocating red fumes. Edgar had set him up, he was the sacrifice, the snarling brimstone whispers had snared his soul and dragged him down to hell. But hell was a spiritual plane, and the Ashmouth its physical gateway. Humans had been to hell. Spirits could be summoned from it. The place outside of place where Sorin found himself was empty of physical forms and the ambient hum of spiritual energy, save for the tumbling motes of color reflecting whole existences that fluttered against the dark.

It dawned on him slowly that his attempts to ape physical movement weren't getting him anywhere. His parochial notions of normalcy, bound by the laws of a single, insignificant world, held no sway in the void. His consciousness drifted across eternity, and as he floundered, the illusions of his old life cracked at the edges and shattered into dust. His world was not discrete, not even a fraction, much less the sum, of universal creation. The town priest used to tell him the world was the greatest of the jewels in the Creator's crown, and outside the lesser jewels of moon, sun, and stars, the universe was empty. It was one of the first lessons he had learned at temple, the wooden pew pressing into his back as he and the other town children were indoctrinated in what passed for truth. He hadn't believed it then, but the learned exceptionalism of his insignificant world revealed itself for a bald-faced lie before the vastness of space.

Intent alone moved him by halting fractions, but he didn't know where to go. His world was far away, and the different, strange realities tossed around him like varicolored pages torn from an ancient and indecipherable book. A blasted landscape, hellish and fuming, lingered for a moment and was ripped out of sight into the void. A world-city, teeming with creatures and technologies he could never have imagined, flashed before his eyes and was gone. A jungle world filled with the wreckage of battle, an ice-bound world nurturing the beginnings of life, an arid planet with a lake of black mana and a screaming prison of the dead, all perceived for a fractal, visceral moment and vanished.

A paradise fluttered before him, all twilight stained-glass and rose-perfumed out of the vortex. Its lavish gardens overflowed with fluted rainbow petals twined about the knotted trunks of dark chocolate trees and spilling jasmine nectar onto the dewy grass. Sweeping palaces of rose-tinted stone with long balconies overarching a crystal-blue sea blinded him with incomprehensible beauty, the myriad colors of a thousand forest-encircled edifices blurring like running paint before his sight. If Sorin had been conscious of his form in the formless dark, he would have extended a hand towards the entrancing vista with awe-struck reverence. He tried anyway, an obliterated moth before a dazzling flame, stretching out with his extinguished body to touch the spark of loveliness.

But the void, though nonsentient, had other plans. It jerked him back and he thrashed in panic, tumbled sightlessly, clawed instinctively at white mana for protection in the unfamiliar tempest. He fell, flailed, fought the inexorable pull of the whirlwind tearing at his consciousness, as space howled around him and threatened to rip him apart. Colors rushed by in a blur, something that was neither energy nor any recognizable force dragged him headlong beyond his control, and released him with careless abandon to tumble through the dark.

Colors exploded across his vision as he broke through into existence, tearing across the thin membrane separating a world, one of many, from the surrounding black. Reality exuberantly shattered the pall of emptiness with light, and air, and feelings he could name and identify. Wind, blue sky, and carded-cotton clouds surrounded him. White plains and gentle hills rolled out beneath him as far as the eye could see.

He was somewhere, that much was clear. The void was behind him, and physical direction made sense of what he saw. Most of the scene that met his eyes was even familiar, not that much different from the farmlands of Gavony before the autumn harvest, when golden wheat stalks would ripple ripe in the wind before the threshing. But he was still formless, and his conscious mind remained trapped outside his body. Hovering above the vast fields of gently swaying golden grass, his solitude was terrible, his hopelessness a void of its own as he struggled fruitlessly to command himself and gain stock of his new surroundings. In the windy silence of a world he didn't know, the light puffs of breeze stirring across Sorin's non-entity bore sibilant witness to his efforts; he strained to reach white mana and form the words to cast spells, but nothing came. He could feel the magical power in the soil, its warm white aura a calm pulse just outside his reach, slipping from his grasp with maddening frustration.

"Poor dear, this is your first time, isn't it?"

A burst of blinding light followed in the echoes of the lovely, soothing voice from across the sky, as a resplendent angel materialized in the empty firmament. Her outspread wings eclipsed the sun and rippled the light around her, casting ruffled pinioned shadows on the grass. Her long gold hair shone brilliantly as it tumbled over the white, gilt-edged gossamer folds of her dress, shivering faintly in the disturbance of her apparition. Pure white energy crackled in the air around her, and the fine features and open kindness of her face were cast in a halo by the backdrop of the sun. Sorin couldn't be sure how he heard her; the language was strange to him, but the intent of her words resonated.

"Have you figured out how to manipulate your form yet?" The dulcet tones of her voice resonated softly in the clear air, white-feathered wings arching in sweeping beats to hold her aloft. Sorin didn't know how to respond, but the jumbled confusion of his thoughts projected his answer.

She waved him forward with one graceful, white-robed arm. "Come down to the ground. I'll show you."

Sorin froze for a minute, then remembered to will himself to the earth. Golden grasses rippled around him, and the glowing gold sun cast a warm light on his formlessness. He wasn't sure how she saw him with his absent body, or how she knew anything about his travels through the void, but there wasn't anyone else to help him and she seemed knowledgeable enough. She watched his struggles hovering just off the earth, her kindly gaze patient.

"It's all intent," she said. "Remember what you looked like before? Hold onto that image and will yourself back to it. What you are—your will can shape worlds."

He had been tall. Scrawny from the famine, with ribs poking out under the paper-white skin of his chest, and his face hollow and sharp-angled with want. Whitish blonde hair long enough to tie back at the nape of his neck, falling over the shoulders of his long black overcoat falling over the leathery brown ankles of his boots. Around his neck, the cool silver chain of his aegis, and the charged and buzzing ruby on his chest a nexus of magical power. Focus. Shape the world.

He started as he opened his eyes. A calm breeze ruffled the tail of his coat and grazed against his face, air passed in and out of his nose at intervals, and his two lanky, booted legs pushed his body up off the earth. But beneath the familiar touch of cotton on the skin of his chest, beneath the calming aura of his aegis, a niggling certainty of _wrong_ crawled inside his skull. On the backs of his hands, peach-colored skin had blanched to chalk white. Far in the distance, the brown and white pinions of a yellow-taloned bird were visible, each and every feather in silhouette against the blinding sun, at such a precipitous height as to make sight ludicrous. The most peculiar, intoxicating scent in his nose, and a rhythmic ringing in his ears and _hunger_, so deep and gnawing in the pit of his stomach that his thoughts were clouded and fixated on the beautiful angel and her softly stirring pulse.

"You—" her halting voice fractured the stillness. "You weren't human, were you?"

No reason to panic, just a few mistakes on the body reconstruction. Deep breaths. "Yes," he shivered. "I was, actually."

"I've never seen any humans like you. Are you sure that's what you looked like?"

"No." He held his palms in front of his face and turned them over. "I tried to bring myself back, and this is what came out."

Her eyes were golden like the fields of tall grass, and they looked at him full of concern. "I'd like to help you. There aren't a lot of us, you know, and I wish I'd had someone to help me on my first planeswalk."

"Your first _what_?" He hadn't meant to snap. Even his voice sounded strange; it resonated louder and deeper in his throat. "Surely you can't also.." he trailed off.

"I can travel between worlds, as you can." The curve of one fine-boned hand indicated his reconstituted form in a calming gesture. "It's difficult when one of us discovers his or her powers. It tends toward unpredictability, and it's almost always messy."

"What powers, exactly?" Notes of weariness and irritation tinged his voice.

"Put simply, access to the Blind Eternities."

"Is that what it's called? That space with the emptiness and the falling?"

"Yes, but it's not empty," she smiled. "We refer to the space between planes as the Blind Eternities, and it contains mana and aether. You just planeswalked through the Blind Eternities from your homeworld, and wound up here."

"So this power," he restated, "It lets me travel through space from one world to another?"

"Not in that sense. You didn't just leave your world and pass through the space around it to some other star or planet. You left your _plane_, crossed the barrier that separates your plane from the Blind Eternities, entered into this dimension, and likely made your way here through some degree of luck."

"I see." To think he had believed himself radical for accepting the existence of other bodies in space! He shook his head slowly. "Where is here?" His spidery fingers swept across the vista.

"This is my realm. It's fairly far out, as these things go."

"So you came here, and made this place yours?"

"Nothing so simple. I created this plane and all its inhabitants. You can do something similar, when you're better in command of your gifts."

Sorin's jaw dropped, overwhelmed by what had to be the angel's fantastic fictions and the searing awareness of physical sensation, of sunlight and heartbeats and wind, that made his temples throb. Definitely a few mistakes on the reconstruction. He passed the tip of his tongue over his teeth and felt them point.

"You can stay here as long as you need to, to catch your bearings," the angel added. "But if you harm my people, or interfere with my realm, I shall end you."

Sorin was in no condition to challenge her. Not that he particularly wanted to, he added as an afterthought; shades knew how long he'd have taken to figure everything out on his own. If anything, he was in her debt.

"I'm grateful for your kindness," again, the distracting pulsing blood scent drew his attention, "but I need to get home. How do I control my movements out there?"

"Where are you from?"

Sorin's brow furrowed. "We don't exactly have a name for it; we just call it the earth, the world, you know—Innistrad, in our tongue."

"I don't know it," the angel answered. "You'll have to find it out yourself. Just remember what it feels like and call it to you. Focus on the memories you have of your home and what it feels like to exist in that space. If you don't get it on your first try, don't worry; we're immortal, you have eternity ahead of you, and you'll get there eventually."

Immortality. Blood feeding. The things Edgar had been promised by the abomination from the pit. His heart caught in his throat to think that this had been the goal of the ritual, that Idalene had been sacrificed and innocents slaughtered to give Edgar the power to cross between planes. For all he knew, Edgar was creating his own plane right now, gorged on demon blood and testing out his new powers on the universe like a child with a new toy. The lengths to which Edgar's pride would drive him—Sorin shuddered to think of the things his grandfather might inflict on the universe. But surely not even the lords of the Ashmouth could planeswalk, much less confer such power on someone else?

"How does one gain the ability to planeswalk?" he asked. "For instance, is there a ritual that confers the power?" He tried to make the question sound innocuous; he was not successful.

"Is that what happened to you?" the fingers of one white hand fluttered against the angel's mouth. "Your energy feels…corrupted. Perhaps whatever ritual you were part of triggered your planeswalking ability, but the ritual did not grant it. The spark is part of you, a rare gift that few beings possess and even fewer successfully activate."

"Good to know." It reassured him considerably to know Edgar wasn't out there gallivanting around the Blind Eternities on a power trip. "Is there any chance I could undo the ritual?"

"There are very few things beyond the reach of a fully realized planeswalker." She alighted on the earth in a fluttering of white robes and folded her wings against her back. Stalks of grass bent under the gentle pressure of her bare feet. "I'm glad you wish to counteract the black magic that cursed you with your present form, but how you go about doing so will be a personal matter. It's not beyond your power to unmake past events, but such a large expenditure of energy will be contingent on the individual nature of your magic, and on the laws of magic that operate on your plane. Not that you are necessarily bound by such laws, of course, but they can interfere with the outcome of your spellwork. Otherwise there's little counsel I can give you on the subject. Just be careful; demons can pose a challenge, even to us, depending on the power level of the spirit involved. White mana should help you cleanse the damage."

Sorin nodded. "Thank you…"

"Serra." Golden eyes sparkled in the warm light. "A word of advice: you have more power at your disposal than the gods of most planes. In the upcoming years, the feats of which you'll discover yourself capable will astonish you. Do not abuse your privilege at the expense of innocent beings."

"I don't intend to. This is all a bit overwhelming, but I know I want to use my power to help others." His thoughts were jumbled, tired. The sunbeams beat down cruelly on his skin, but he was far from shelter on the wide and empty plains.

"I should hope so. Let the curse on your form be a warning against unwarranted experimentation in the future."

"It wasn't my fault!" he snapped. The rebuke had hurt, the more so because it was, in the grand scheme of things, unjust. "My grandfather tricked me. I didn't realize he was cutting a deal with a demon until it was too late to back out."

Serra frowned. "That doesn't justify your complicity. You have a responsibility to atone for your actions, not excuse them."

Shame crept hot and sulfur-tinged through Sorin's chest. Edgar was more at fault, but she was right; he should have known better. Wending through the mountains with Runo in the shadow-shrouded blue-upholstered carriage, the possibility of following the narrow road away from the impending summons had flitted across his mind. He had dismissed it. He had believed Edgar's ridiculous story about the Geier River spirit and the role he had to play in liberating it. If he had outright refused like he should have, the ritual might never have gone off. He might still have convinced Edgar to leave Stensia, and they'd be safe in Kessig right now, away from the mountain valley and the blood sacrifices that had profaned the new moon night. Idalene would still be alive.

He sighed. "There's nothing you can tell me about undoing the ritual?"

"Very little," she said more softly. "How many people were involved?"

"Thirteen, including myself. One of our number was sacrificed."

"It was your grandfather who killed her?"

"Yes." His voice caught in his throat. "He led the ritual."

"What do you know about the demon you invoked?"

"His name was Shilgengar. He was powerful, more powerful than anything I had ever felt. There were at least three or four sacrifices that went into the offerings before the demon demanded a fresh kill for the blood ritual. I didn't know about any of it. I was just supposed to hold the wards."

Serra's eyes were full of pity, but her tone was firm. "Given the amount of power that obviously went into this, the best you might be able to hope for at this point is damage control. Did you see what happened to the demon before your planeswalk?"

"No."

"Then your first objective is to banish him back to wherever he came from, if you aren't strong enough to kill him outright. Then you'll need to deal with the other ritual participants, if any of them survived."

"You don't mean—"

"Kill them, if they refuse to repent."

Sorin stared open-mouthed. "I can't. My grandfather is arrogant, power hungry even, but he's not evil. And Runo is a priest! He must have had reason to—"

"Consider what your grandfather has done." Her judgment was cold, dispassioned, and righteous certainty leant a damning finality to her words. "He is likely beyond saving. You should prepare yourself to take any measures necessary to ensure he doesn't hurt anyone else. You'll need to kill him, Sorin." He didn't bother trying to surmise how she knew his name. "He's a threat to your entire world. If you don't deal with him, there's no telling how many more people he'll harm."

Beneath the prickling rasp of the sun on his too-pale skin and the hunger twisting away in his gut, Sorin was numb. Serra was making wild leaps of judgment, she didn't understand the situation thoroughly enough to make such calls and didn't have any business doing so.

"I should get going," he cleared his throat.

"Before you go anywhere, there's a few things I want you to consider. The magnitude of your power means you have a responsibility to use it for the common good. To do otherwise runs the risk of literally rending reality. Killing your grandfather will be painful to you, but it will liberate your world from a great source of evil. The needs of the many outweigh your personal attachments."

Sorin didn't want to consider, much less seriously contemplate, the terrible things she was saying. "I'll do my best," he conceded. The blasphemies Edgar had committed were horrific beyond comprehension, but Sorin couldn't accept that his case was hopeless. Better to make him see the error of his ways and work for the greater good in the future. "How do I return to the Blind Eternities?"

"You shouldn't. Not yet, anyway."

"You don't understand," he started. "I don't know how the ritual turned out; I need to go home and make sure everyone's alright." The calming aura emanating from Serra's form failed to soothe the knot of anxiety in the pit of his stomach.

"I won't stand in your way if your mind is made up. But if you'll take my advice, you should stay here awhile and collect yourself. I can show you a few things about white mana and how you can use it with your new powers. I can offer you protection while you gather your bearings and come into your own. There are other planeswalkers out there, and not all of them will be benevolently disposed towards you. It would be irresponsible of me to let you leave, exposing you to such dangers, when I have a chance to offer you help."

The promise of refuge, though temporary, was tempting. Sorin knew he wasn't ready to face the void again, however much he wanted to, and stumbling across a kindly and experienced older walker was a stroke of good fortune he knew was too good to pass up.

"I accept your offer," he said finally.

"Good," she gave a relieved smile. "I'd like to show you the rest of my realm, to give you an idea of what you'll be capable of someday. And then you're going to rest for a while. You have a lot to think over."

Sorin followed her into the sunlit afternoon, beating wings and weatherbeaten boots making their way across the golden, mana-charged earth. Innistrad needed him, but it could wait for a time. His body felt fresh and alive in a way it never had before, made all the more real by his return from oblivion. The changes left by the ritual had given him cause for unease, most of all the consuming, distracting hunger that gnawed away at his mind, but he had made it out of the void alive. He would rest, and then he would set Innistrad to rights and unmake the profanities Edgar had unleashed with his hubris.

* * *

A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed! This was a hard chapter to write, since it involved getting inside the mind of a planeswalker at a time when he doesn't have any vocabulary or frame of reference to articulate what is happening to him. Serra is not going to be the only influence on Sorin's planeswalking philosophy; next chapter will elaborate on that further. Also, internet cookies to anyone who recognizes the Star Wars and Elder Scrolls worlds that inspired the selection of planes I had Sorin notice. :)


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